Head of Product Platforms - Technology

Zurich 56 Company Ltd; Australia; Hybrid; AUD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

5 weeks annual leave

Hybrid working arrangement

Wellbeing program AUD$500 annual bonus

Relocation/Global mobility options

Job summary

Zurich Australia is seeking a strategic Head of Product Platforms – Technology to own the platform-as-a-product capability shaping the digital foundation for our product teams. You will partner with CIO leadership to drive strategy, investments and delivery across DevSecOps, observability, and cloud foundations.

You will lead cross-functional squads, set priorities, and ensure platforms enable faster, reliable production while reducing engineering friction.

Qualifications

• Significant experience in product management or technical product ownership.
• Broad technical knowledge across modern software delivery and platform engineering.
• Strong AWS cloud knowledge and cloud foundations experience.
• Proven ability to lead through influence across multiple teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead strategy for Zurich's technology foundations platform and set the roadmap.
• End-to-end accountability for platform capabilities from investment to decommissioning.
• Create a compelling internal platform proposition for digital product teams.
• Lead DevSecOps and quality automation to embed security and testing in delivery.
• Partner with regional teams on cloud foundations and cost management.
• Own observability, instrumentation, logging, and service-level measurement.
• Manage value case, investment envelope, budgets and vendor arrangements.
• Develop platform squads and align with engineering, architecture and security.

Skills

Product management

Platform engineering

AWS cloud

DevSecOps

Job description

Head of Product Platforms - Technology

A new transformational adventure awaits you…

How does 5 weeks of annual leave, a fulfilling career you'll genuinely enjoy, and working for a reputable organization that promotes wellbeing and drives digital transformation sound to you?

As one of Forbes 2024 ‘World’s Best Employers’ and Fortune’s ‘World’s Most Admired Companies’ for 2025, Zurich - a leader in the insurance industry, is on a journey towards a brighter future… A brighter future for you - focused on your career, your wellbeing, and your community - as well as our customers and the planet.

Join us on this thrilling journey as we work towards our vision of becoming Australia's leading digital insurer. If you're eager to be part of a values-driven global organisation that's experiencing real growth and transformation, and if you share our commitment to making a tangible difference and taking continuous steps towards a sustainable future for our people, customers, communities, and our planet, then keep reading!

Let’s create a brighter future together, let’s make a difference

It’s important to know, what you do matters. At Zurich, we don’t just cover, we care.

As Head of Product Platforms – Technology, you will take end-to-end ownership of the technology foundational capabilities that underpin Zurich’s digital product teams. Reporting to the Chief Information Officer, this is a senior leadership opportunity to establish and lead our platform-as-a-product capability, bringing strategy, investment, prioritisation and delivery together around one coherent technology foundations roadmap.

The scope is broad and highly influential. Your portfolio will span digital foundations and core capabilities, DevSecOps tooling and delivery pipelines, quality and test automation, AWS cloud foundations, observability and reliability engineering, developer self-service and shared services, as well as the modernisation and decommissioning of legacy tooling and environments. Your customers will be our internal engineers and digital product teams, and your success will be measured by how effectively the platform enables them to move from idea to production, release confidently, operate reliably and spend less time solving common engineering problems.

You will lead dedicated cross-functional platform squads and work closely with engineering practices and product teams, acting as the bridge between technology foundations and digital product delivery. It requires someone who can own the ‘why’ and ‘what’, establish priorities and drive delivery, while partnering with deep technical specialists on the ‘how’.

What does this look like in practice:

• Lead the strategy for Zurich’s technology foundations platform, setting the technical roadmap, investment priorities, capability backlog, lifecycle plans and measures of value through partnering with the Practices, CoEs and Product teams.
• Hold end-to-end accountability for foundational capabilities from opportunity identification and investment case through design, delivery, release, adoption, ongoing service performance, modernisation and the controlled decommissioning of legacy tooling and environments.
• Create a compelling internal platform proposition for our digital product teams, building self-service capabilities, reusable patterns, accelerators, golden paths, simplified onboarding and shared services that remove engineering friction and enable teams to deliver faster and more consistently.
• Lead the DevSecOps and quality automation agenda so that security, testing and compliance controls are embedded in the delivery pipeline by default, applying approved AI-enabled capability across the engineering lifecycle to improve release frequency, change success and lead time to production while reducing manual effort and hand-offs.
• Partner with regional platform teams to set direction and improvements for cloud foundations, including landing zones, environments, provisioning, resilience patterns and platform cost management, so that teams consume standardised, secure and well-governed building blocks rather than assembling their own.
• Own the observability and monitoring capability, establishing consistent instrumentation, logging, alerting and service-level measurement so that product teams can see how their products behave in production and detect, diagnose and recover from issues quickly.
• Own the value case and commercial performance of the platform, including its investment envelope, budget, vendor arrangements, platform OKRs and benefit realisation, making evidence-based decisions across innovation, delivery capacity, technical debt, resilience, cost and risk.
• Lead and develop dedicated platform squads and build strong partnerships across digital product teams, engineering, architecture, infrastructure, quality engineering, cyber security, risk, suppliers and regional platform teams, creating alignment and influencing outcomes in a complex global organisation.

Important to your success – let’s grow together

In order to be successful, you will have the following:

• Significant experience in product management or technical product ownership, with exposure to technology platforms, shared engineering capabilities or platform engineering environments.
• Demonstrated experience owning a technology product or platform from strategy and roadmap through prioritisation, delivery, adoption and ongoing performance.
• Broad technical knowledge across modern software delivery and platform engineering, including areas such as DevSecOps, Site Reliability Engineering, quality automation and observability.
• Strong AWS cloud knowledge, with the credibility to engage across cloud foundations, infrastructure, resilience, security and cloud-native technology without needing to be the technical specialist in every discipline.
• Proven ability to lead through influence across product and technology teams, bringing together engineering, architecture, infrastructure, security, risk and other stakeholders around shared priorities.
• Strong commercial and delivery judgement, with experience balancing customer needs, technology investment, delivery priorities, risk and long-term platform value.

Belong. Zurich is here to support you

There are so many reasons why Zurich is a great place to be and the right choice for you, but here are just a few.

• Enjoy 5 weeks of annual leave for permanent staff through our Z leave initiative, along with 15 days of personal/carer’s leave as we empower our people to manage their own wellbeing. Plus, access to Family Care (parental leave).
• Benefit from a hybrid working arrangement – 3 days in the office and 2 days working from home per week for full-time employees.
• Access programs to stay healthy and feel healthier, receive an AUD$500 wellbeing payment per year, and a AUD$295 new starter e-voucher for your work-from-home setup (flex work - hybrid working), along with other great benefits through our Shine portal.
• Grow and thrive in your career with our award-winning training programs. We support and encourage your development because our strength lies in our people, and we value your individuality.
• Work with global, diverse, and inclusive teams; explore your passions, fuel innovation, drive equity, collaborate, and make a positive difference beyond your role.
• Take advantage of global mobility opportunities across more than 200 countries worldwide.
• Volunteer and work in our state-of-the-art Green Star rated offices (when you are in the office) and dress for your day.
• We plant a tree for every new employee.
• Not to mention our various employer of choice awards/memberships – WGEA; Family Inclusive Workplace; Gold AWEI Employer, Pride in Diversity… to name a few.

We could go on, but the main point is that Zurich is a great place to be, where you can truly belong, be yourself, maintain work/life balance, and thrive in a supportive environment.

Zurich is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to ensuring that our recruitment process is fair and accessible for all candidates. If you require any special accommodations to participate in our recruitment process, we encourage you to please let us know at the time of your application.